Uniformity in our Graduation Data

Over the past few months I’ve increasingly written about the dropout crisis facing our nation. One post that I distinctly remember pertains to the lack of uniformity for states reporting their dropout statistics.
Yesterday, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings attempted to fix this problem by issuing proposed federal regulations which, in addition to other things, would create a uniform graduation rate reporting system among states.

The formula that states will now need to use is one that was agreed upon by the nation’s governors in 2005. Spellings also illustrated how the dropout epidemic negatively affects our economy:

Over their lifetimes, dropouts from the class of 2007 alone will cost our nation more than $300 billion in lost wages, lost taxes, and lost productivity. Increasing graduation rates by just five percent, for male students alone, would save us nearly $8 billion each year.

I think it is important that we take steps to solve our nation’s dropout crisis and it’s imperative that all states use the same formula, so we can truly know how the severity of the epidemic. Solving this crisis is going to take a lot of hard work and collaboration with leaders at all levels of government and I commend Sec. Spellings for continuing this dialogue yesterday.

You can read her full remarks at the Department of Education Web site.

Comments

[Bill Betzen]

It is long overdue to have a common national definition for dropout rate. Using the 9th grade cohort graduation rate is certainly a solid decision. Some could argue that since the 9th grade is the most inflated grade nationally due to retention that we should use another base, such as 8th grade, from which to calculate dropout rate. I did it both ways with the Dallas ISD spreadsheet found at www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd.htm. You can see the difference it makes.

However, as long as we are all measuring the same thing in the same way, this is a tremendous step forward.

Another value to using the 9th grade is that as we make progress in lessening the retention rate in 9th grade that will probably happen hand-in-hand with the lowering of dropout rates. The progress will appear to happen more rapidly because as the 9th grade shrinks the number graduating will increase. The improvement numbers will look even better.

We need urgently to correct our 50%+ dropout rates in cities like my own, Dallas. Hopefully our 3-year old Middle School Archive Project (www.studentmotivation.org) is a small step in that direction.